1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to electronic catalog systems that include functionality for users to create lists of items they wish to rent, obtain as gifts, or otherwise acquire.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many online systems provide services through which users can create personal lists, referred to herein generally as “preference lists,” of items they wish to rent, obtain as gifts, purchase, or otherwise obtain. For example, online shopping web sites commonly provide a service through which users can create and post wish lists (also referred to as “gift registry” lists) of items they wish to obtain as gifts. Other users can browse and make gift purchases from these lists. As another example, some DVD rental web sites provide a service through which users can populate personal “rental queues” (another type of preference list) with selected DVD/video titles they wish to rent. Typically, the items at the top of a user's rental queue are automatically removed from the queue and shipped to the user such that some predetermined maximum number of DVDs are rented out to the user at a time.
Many online systems also provide a recommendation service. A recommendation service is a computer-implemented service that recommends items stored or represented in a data repository. The recommendations are customized to particular users based on information known about the users. One common application for recommendation services involves recommending items for purchase, rental, subscription, or some other form of consumption. For example, online merchants commonly provide services for recommending books, compact discs, videos, and other types of items to customers based on the purchase histories, rental histories, item viewing histories, and/or item ratings of the respective users. Recommendation services are also common for recommending web sites, articles, users, music files, and other types of items.